We certainly did not starve on our journey, for the carriage was well stored with Parisian comestibles, French and Rhine wines. Vienna was peopled with sovereigns, embassadors, ministers of state, and generals, and there was a succession of festivities from morning till night. These festivities were suddenly put an end to by the escape of Napoleon I. from the isle of Elba. A rumor had reached us early one morning that such had been the case, and Wellington immediately proceeded to the palace. Shortly afterward I met Eugène Beauharnais, Napoleon's step-son, who confirmed the report. From that moment until the 29th of March, when we left Vienna for Brussels, my chief was entirely occupied in business or absorbed in thought. Upon arriving at Brussels, Wellington shook me warmly by the hand, and, in a most feeling manner, said " that, as he was anxious to replace on his staff those officers who had served him in the Peninsula, he could no longer retain me." This sounded like a death-blow to my hopes; my disppointment was, however, considerably lessened by his grace adding, "I will appoint you to the first vacancy." Most strictly did he keep his word; for, a few days before the allied army entered Paris after the battle of Waterloo, I, then an extra aide-de-camp to General Maitland, encamped with the Guards in the Bois de Boulogne, received a few lines from the duke, saying "that, in consequence of the lamented death of Colonels Gordon and Canning, two vacancies had occurred, one of which I was to fill up."

I lost no time in joining my chief-a few days before he made his triumphant entry into Paris. And here I may remark that the duke was extremely attached to all his staff, more especially those who had gone through the deprivations, the difficulties, and dangers, of the Peninsular campaign. I select this period from a desire not to be egotistical; and certainly those who composed it were, generally speaking, young men of active habits and good constitutions, possessing courage, judgment, quickness, and decision. The huntingfield in England had made most of the staff fully competent for a not very unimportant part of their duty-that of conveying orders to distant posts, which, in a wild, mountainous country, with an enemy on the lookout, was no easy task.

It was a surprise that the French officers could not get over, when they saw the striplings that attended the British commander-inchief; for in their army few under the rank of full colonels were attached to the emperor or his generals. Yet these young soldiers-I still refer to the Peninsular staff- did their duty in the most meritorious manner, so as to gain the thanks and confidence of their chief.

temptuous, at the message delivered him by a boy aide-de-camp.

To the "gentlemen of England who live at home at ease," and whose ideas of hardship are very like those of the young guardsman who said, or rather is reported to have said, "he could manage to rough it on beefsteaks and port wine," I must point out that the duty of an aide-de-camp of Wellington's, although one of the highest honor, was not quite the bed of roses many supposed it to have been. Fancy a long ride of some fifteen leagues, under a broiling sun or the "pelting, pitiless storm," over a wild, mountainous tract, or through plains intersected with rivers and ditches; a straggler from the enemy's ranks, deserter from your own, or pilfering peasant of the country, looking out to enrich himself by quietly shooting you through the head. You reach the place of your destination, deliver your dispatches, devote the halfhour your chief has allotted you to rest and refreshment, and retrace your steps to headquarters. The next morning the note of preparation is heard, an action is anticipated; the eagle-eye of Wellington burns with unusual fire, some deed is to be done before sunset. Before noon you are in the midst of it; you are ordered to the right of the line to bring up a regiment to support another nearly overwhelmed by the superior force of the enemy. You gallop along the ensanguined field strewed with the wounded and the dead; you reach the commanding officer, deliver the brief order of Wellington, written with pencil in his own hand, and torn from his memorandum-book, and then hasten to return to your chief. A few straggling dragoons of the enemy, having left their main body, recognize you by your dress to be a staff-officer; they wheel round, and make a dash at you-your trusty steed answers to your touch, and away you go like Mazeppa's wild horse "upon the pinions of the wind." At one time the unevenness of the ground gives them a chance, but on a level your charger, a high-mettled racer, leaves them far behind, to anathematize you in no very measured terms.

The day is over, our arms are crowned with victory; but even then what thoughts come over you! It is true you are spared, but many of your dearest and best friends have fallen. The reflection is mournful, and nothing but the excitement of the time could keep up your spirits. In the depth of the night, when lying on your straw pallet, exposed, perhaps, to the inclemencies of the weather, to the heavy bursts of rain, the vivid flashes of lightning, the loud claps of thunder, the furious gusts of wind, the thoughts of "home" and those dear to you will come over the mind of the bravest, and fill it with reflections easier to be understood than de

To give an instance of the promptness and fidelity with which the duty of the aides-decamp was carried on, I will quote an anecdote, which, among many others, occurs to

me.

Upon one occasion, during an action, my late brother, the Duke of Richmond, was sent with an order to one of the most gallant regiments in the service, the Seventh Royal Fusilecrs, who were suffering greatly from the enemy's fire. Just as he reached this distinguished corps, he observed that some of our guns had ceased firing. Addressing the artillery - officer, he mentioned the object of his mission, and suggested that, if he would only continue to pour some grape into the enemy's cavalry, the Fusileers would get rid of a formidable opponent. "Enemy's cavalry!" said the artillery-officer; they

66

belong to the German Legion." "You are wrong," replied the young aide-de-camp; “I am confident they are French. Remember, I have no orders for you to fire, but if you ceased under the impression that they were friends, not foes, I advise you again to blaze away." In a second the artillery-officer took the hint, and again "opened the ball" in a way that made the French take to their horses' heels. When this was mentioned to Wellington, he applauded the judgment and energy of his aide-de-camp.

Wellington has been accused of want of sympathy for individuals, and of having an insufficient sense of the services of his army. He certainly was not demonstrative when on duty, his habitual reserve often concealing feelings that he was chary of displaying; but he was always fair and just, when circumstances did not involve a compromise of system, or interfere with his sense of the public advantage. I could give many instances of his kindness of heart, but two must suffice. Although the Iron Duke was ever foremost in the fray, he was never wounded except upon one occasion, and that was at Orthez, where he received a severe contusion in his hip from a spent ball. This prevented him directing in person the last movements of the army on that day, but he did not quit the field until Soult had began to retreat. In this engagement, my elder brother, the late Duke of Richmond, was most severely wounded while leading his company to the attack. The wound was pro

nounced to be mortal.

On the following morning Wellington was enabled to get about upon crutches, and his first walk was across the square to the house in which his former aide-de-camp lay, for Richmond, like a good soldier, had quitted the staff to do duty with his regiment, the gallant Fifty-second Light Infantry. His grace hobbled into the room, where the patient was still in a most precarious state, and the late Dr. Hair, the surgeon, who, exhausted with fatigue, was resting upon a mattress, started up at the entrance of the duke, and made a sign that the wounded man was sleeping. For a second, Wellington leaned against the mantel-piece. He, the sternest of the stern, where the claims of duty invoked the suppression of natural impulses, gave way to the most poignant grief. Suddenly my brother awoke, and, recognizing his chief, expressed a hope that he had been successful on the previous day. "I've given them a good licking," replied the great man," and I shall follow it up."

The exhausted youth then turned to doze again, and as his chief left the room he appeared broken-hearted at the thought that be had taken a last farewell of the son of one of his oldest and dearest friends. It has always occurred to me that the above would furnish an excellent subject for a picture, that is, if faithfully represented. I say faithfully, because unquestionably many pictures that have appeared cannot claim that epithet. Among others, there is one of the ball given by my mother, the night before the battle of QuatreBras, and at which I was present. Byron has made the most of the subject in his beautiful lines, but the artist goes far beyond him, for he makes the house a splendid mansion, with ladies leaning over the spacious balusters, and gives mustaches to all the officers, except those of the Hussars, who alone were entitled to wear them.

The other instance occurred on the night after the battle of Waterloo. There was brie rest for Wellington that night, nature claimed

some relief, and after a frugal meal he threw himself upon his cloak, laid over some bundles of hay, for his attached aide-de-camp, Sir Alexander Gordon, severely wounded, had been placed upon the duke's bed. Wellington's sleep was sound, the sleep of the good man and the brave. At three o'clock in the morning he was aroused by Dr. Hume, who found his grace sitting up on his rude pallet, covered with the dust of the previous day. The kind-hearted surgeon informed him that the spirit of Gordon had fled; the gay and gallant now lay a corpse in the adjoining room.

Wellington was deeply affected at hearing of this and other casualties, tears dropped fast upon his friend's hand which he held in his, and were chasing one another in furrows over his dusty cheeks. Brushing them suddenly away with his left hand, the duke said in a voice tremulous with emotion, "Well, thank God, I don't know what it is to lose a battle, but certainly nothing can be more painful than to gain one with the loss of so many of one's friends." The latter feeling weighed heavily upon his spirit, but the gain was above all price. He felt it proudly as a soldier, humbly as a Christian, and if at the commencement of the struggle he spoke in the animated tones of Henry V., like him he now exclaimed:

"O God, thy arm was here,

And not to us, but to thy arm alone,
Ascribe we all."

The late Earl of Dudley, in writing to Dr. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, in January, 1816, remarks: "After the battle the duke joined in the pursuit, and followed the enemy for some miles. Colonel Hervey, who was with him, advised him to desist, as the country was growing less open, and he might be fired at by some stragglers from behind the hedges. "Let them fire away," said Wellington, "the battle is won, and my life is of no value now."

With regard to an insufficient sense of the services of his army, I will merely quote the duke's own words: "Nothing could surpass, or indeed equal, the British troops in the field. The sense of honor among officers existed in no other service to the same degree. I always felt confident when I put a detachment into a post that they would maintain it against any force until they dropped." The above passage is extracted from Lord Palmerston's "Tour to Paris" in 1815. I may further add that, at a dinner at headquarters just after the battle of Toulouse, the conversation turned upon the late immediate movements of the two armies, when Wellington exclaimed: "I will tell you the difference between Soult and me. When he gets into a difficulty, his troops don't get him out of it; when I get into one, mine always do."

Wellington was a great lover of field-sports, and was devoted both to hunting and sporting. While in Portugal, he wrote to my father to the following effect-it forms a postscript to an interesting detail of his military movements: "I was at the family-seat of the Villa Vicosa, the property of the Duke of Braganza, some days ago, and shot with ball

ten head of deer. The park in which they were is immense, and I dare say did not contain less than five thousand head-many of them red deer. This is pretty good sport." The duke was so thoroughly a fox - hunter, that he never allowed heat, wet, or cold, to interfere with the sport, and during the Peninsular campaign, and the occupation of France by the allied armies, he kept a pack of fox-hounds at headquarters. His object was, not only to enliven the leisure hours of himself and his officers during the monotony of winter quarters, but to encourage a manly and invigorating amusement; and he often quoted cases to prove the advantage of fieldsports.

Perhaps the most delightful time I passed during the three years that I had the good fortune to serve on Wellington's staff was at the Château Mont St.-Martin, a few leagues from the headquarters at Cambray. Nothing could exceed the hospitality of Wellington, or his desire to promote the amusements of all who came within the circle of his acquaintance. Our mornings, when off duty, were devoted to shooting and fox and wild-boar hunting, our evenings to dancing and private theatricals; and any stranger paying a passing visit to the château who witnessed the unaffected manner, the unostentatious display, the simple habits of the host, would scarcely have imagined that he was in the presence of "Le Vainqueur du Vainqueur du Monde."

I have already said that Wellington was devoted to hunting, and, had he been trained earlier in life to it, would have been (as in a military point of view he was) difficult to beat. He possessed an ardent love for the sport, had a quick eye, and no lack of courage. I can see him now, "in my mind's eye," mounted on a thorough-bred English hunter, galloping over the plains near Vienna, with Lord Londonderry's hounds, after a bag-fox. I again have a vision of being in the forests of Fontainebleau, St.-Germain, and Compiègne, with the French royal stag-hounds, and over the wild country that surrounded his residence, the Château Mont St.-Martin near Cambray, with the wild-boar hounds. I see his animated look beaming with joy, as, escaping from diplomatic or military duties, he enjoyed a gallop with the hounds, encouraging by his own example officers under his command to participate in this manly exercise, which he knew full well was not alone conducive to health, but, like the heroes of antiquity, who were μabyraι Kuvnyías, disciples of hunting, rendered them hardy and courageous, their exploits against wild animals being a prelude to their future victories.

During the time I was on Wellington's staff the duke took part in two boar-hunts at which I was present-one near Paris in 1815, the other not far from Cambray during the following year-at Paris the pack of boarhounds belonging to a French gentleman. They were of the Norman breed, very large and powerful, with large heads, long ears, and dewlaps; they were marked similarly to foxhounds, had excellent noses, were very steady, and from the depth of their cry were particularly adapted to forest-hunting.

Although Wellington was not professedly a wit, there were touches of pleasantry in his conversation which rendered him a most agreeable companion. His reply when asked if it was true that he had been surprised at Waterloo by Napoleon, "I was never surprised till now," is well known; not perhaps so well known is a conversation that took place at his table, when a lady of rank requested him to give her an account of the battle of Waterloo,

which reminds one of the French countess who seized a philosopher at the supper-table and exclaimed, "While they are cutting up the fowls, and we have got five minutes to spare, do tell me the history of the world, for I want to know it so much!" "Ah!" said Wellington, "battle of Waterloo. Very easily told. We pommeled the French, they pommeled us; I suppose we pommeled the hardest, so we won the day."

Wellington has been censured for want of judgment in selecting the plains of Waterloo as his battle-ground, French military critics contending that the duke fought the battle in a position full of difficulty. This charge he indignantly repelled, and, after thoroughly exonerating himself, concluded by saying, "My plan was to keep my ground till the Prussians appeared, and then to attack the French position, and I executed my plan."

Wellington was ever just toward those who opposed him. When asked what he really thought of the talent of the Emperor Napoleon as a great general, he said: "I have always considered the presence of Napoleon with an army equal to an additional force of forty thousand men from his superior talent, and from the enthusiasm which his name and presence inspired in the troops." On another occasion the duke also said that he thought Napoleon superior to Turenne, Tallard, or any of the old generals of former times; but Napoleon had this advantage over every other general, himself in particular, that his power was unlimited. He could order every thing on the spot as he pleased; if he wanted reenforcements, they were sent; if to change the plan of a campaign, it was changed; if to reward services, he could confer honors on the field of battle; whereas he, the duke, and other generals, were obliged to write home to ministers, and wait their decision, perhaps that of Parliament; and he himself had never had the power of conferring the slightest reward on any of his followers, however deserving.

I can well remember the time when the duke returned to England after his brilliant campaigns crowned with the battle of Waterloo; at that time he was cheered by the people wherever he went, and lauded to the skies. Afterward, at the period of the Reform Bill, in 1832, the fickle people forgot all his services, and constantly hooted him in the streets. One day, coming from the Tower on horseback, the rascally mob attacked him with so much virulence and malice that he was exposed to considerable personal danger in the street. I was, in that year, at a ball given by him at Apsley House to King William IV. and his queen, when the mob were very unruly and indecent in their conduct at the gates; and on the following days they proceeded to such excesses that they broke the windows of Apsley House, and did much injury to his property. It was then that he caused to be put up those iron blinds to his windows which remain to this day as a record of the people's ingratitude. Some time afterward, when he had regained all his popularity, and began to enjoy that great and high reputation which he carried to the grave, he was riding up Constitution Hill in the Park, followed by an immense mob, who were cheering him in every direction. He heard it all with the most stoical indifference, never putting his horse out of a walk, or seeming to regard them, till he leisurely arrived at Apsley House, when he stopped at the gate, turned round to the rabble, and then pointing with his finger to the iron blinds which still closed the windows, he made them a sarcastic bow, without saying a word.

COLLEGE ANECDOTES.

THE

HE innate love of mischief, which early appears in childhood, and goes to sleep in the bustling seriousness of boy-life, when pigeons, rabbits, hens, and Guinea-pigs, keep the nature too fully occupied to be engaged in practical jokes, reappears in all its power, enhanced with a rich fertility of ways and means, in the college-days. Is there any period in life like this? Nothing is fixed or settled! Every thing is an open question again with each new day's new sunrise. Whatsoever is done, is done critically as to the regulative judgment, and at the same time with a never-ending relationship to the sense of mirth.

Whatever can be turned to the account of humor, whatever can be made to sharpen a jest, or feather a satire, or raise a laugh, is drafted into the service, and the earth, sea, and sky, the sceptered sovereigns of past history, along with the newest lights of the present, are all made into material for jokes for the unterrified Sophomore.

Nothing is sacred to this unblushing age, and surely every unskilled professor must tremble as he sees the hordes of untamed Freshmen entering the college - door, with something of the feeling the Romans must have had when, after a fearful struggle with an invading German tribe, they heard there were hosts of other tribes who were coming down upon Rome to try the very same thing for themselves.

Every college-man must have his memory filled with reminiscences of this period. Let the present writer recount a few truthful experiences:

A young Professor of Latin, who was continually called by the suggestive title of "Miss Fanny," was the subject of many a cruel joke.

Sulphuretted hydrogen was very frequently broken in large bottles on entering his room, with the utmost bewilderment on the part of those who entered as to who the author was.

Fifty-cent fire-crackers would be thrown into the room after the fashion of— "The rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air," of our nation's greatest song. But though every one was willing to run for water, and innumerable men were apparently injured, either seriously or fatally, no one could ever find out from which Sophomore crowding into that Latin room the " fiery dart was hurled." On one occasion "Miss Fanny" could scarcely be seen for the sulphurous thickness of the atmosphere

"When furious Frank and fiery Hun Shout in their sulphurous canopy." One day, while we were deep in Horace, "The tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells—"

was heard in the room, and a mouse with a bell round its neck was seen playing pussy wants a corner with the different angles of the rooms. Thereupon the unhappy professor said to the wretch nearest the door, will you please open the door in

"Mr.

order to let that animal go out?" But this was just the thing the class did not want, and accordingly at that very moment, when the eyes of all in the room were fixed upon the ridiculus mus, a heavy "Liddell and Scott" was successfully planted between the advancing mouse and the open door, and since it was a vis a tergo whose whence could never be known, it sent the mouse back again to the resonant corners, and the recitation went on "to the music of the bells."

On another occasion, in the same room, a large white pigeon, a sad burlesque on the cooing dove of Peace, was let loose as the class crowded in at the door. The windows were guarded on the outside by wire-nettings to keep off maliciously-disposed projectiles ab extra, and therefore the very deliverance from one form of evil was the plague and nuisance to the other. At last, after several vain attempts to dislodge the bird from maps and black-boards, the frightened thing flew to a bookcase overlooking the professor's table, and surveyed the scene from above. Hereupon a pair of rubber shoes were thrown at it, which lodged on the top of the bookcase. After the recitation, a piouslydisposed youth who was studying for the ministry, and was known as "Parson Reedbirds," went up to claim his articles of apparel, and was at once marked "zero," and summoned before the Faculty as a particeps criminis. In vain he protested that he had not thrown the rubbers, that he would not do such a thing, that they had been seized by some other man who was afraid to take his own. It would not do! Here was circumstantial evidence sufficient to convict him, and poor Parson Reedbirds went before the Faculty for an admonition.

Another professor, a teacher of German, was once very much disturbed by an unruly bench full of Juniors.

At last, in his despair, he exclaimed: "That bench vill leave the room, and vill stay outside."

Whereupon the young rascals carried out the bench and left it outside, and blandly returned to other seats.

"No, no," said the professor, "I do not mean that. I mean the young men vill go out and the bench vill return."

So the young men brought back the bench and sat on it, as though this was all that could reasonably be expected of them.

Another professor, who was the pink of propriety, was sadly disconcerted in the midst of a lecture upon Edmund Spenser by about a dozen roughs and sporting characters, who came into the room without knocking, with all manner of dogs to sell.

Finally, one Irishman let the cat out of the bag (if we may use such an expression in a dog-story) by saying:

"Well, thin, shure, an' why did ye's advertoise for a dog betwixt the hours of tin and eliven the day, if ye's nivir wanted one?"

And then he presented a dirty scrap of paper, which read as follows:

"WANTED, a dog; any breed will answer; highest price paid for mongrel pups. Apply to ProfessRoom No. 3. University. Bring the dogs between the hours of ten and eleven."

or

Another professor, of whom every one was, with reason, well afraid, was in the habit of getting off bright retorts on the delinquent students.

One man, who had on a certain occasion stood for half an hour silently anchored to a black-board like a horse tied to his manger, was finally accosted as follows:

"Well, Mr. Jones, you have stood there for some time. Now, how do you explain your problem?"

Jones, who had no idea of the problem or of any human interpretation of it, made one deep dive down into the recesses of his memory, and brought up one stray principle.

"Well, sir," he said, "I explain it by the principle that the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence."

"That will do, sir," said the professor, visibly marking a round O opposite his name in the class-roll; "if your angle of reflection was only a little less obtuse, we would not have such incidents as these."

On another occasion this same professor said to a student who had blundered terribly through a recitation :

"How far off are you from a fool?"

"I suppose," replied the student, measuring the distance between himself and the professor's table, "about seven feet and a half."

The professor's eyes twinkled as he said: "It's a pity, sir, you confine your brightness only to your answers!"

The hardest time I ever saw a college professor pushed happened to an elderly gentleman, who was appointed teacher in drawing to a Freshman class, who were feeling their way well into a state of Sophomorebood. The poor man entered upon his duty at the beginning of a third term. He did not know one of the class, and had never taught before. When the roll of sixty members was called, it was enlarged by the caller to about one hundred and fifty - Christopher Columbus Smith, Michael Angelo Jones, Julius Cæsar Johnson, Scipio Africanus Brown, etc., etc. All answered "Here!" It was a full month before any of the class were identified, since there were no recitations made, and when the poor man's back was turned to explain his diagrams, the wooden models of bridges and churches were inverted, church-steeples were put on Corinthian columns, and Doric pillars crowned block models of cathedrals, and these were all quickly transcribed to the eager drawing-book. At last, at a given signal, the whole class would rise, as if the bell had sounded, and the clock, which had been set forward half an hour, would confirm the action of the rogues by pointing seriously to two o'clock. Whereupon the old gentleman would say, "Well, well; my watch must be slow," and thus the exercises would come to a close.

One trick, to take up the time of a very argumentative Professor of Metaphysics, was to raise some point as to what Reid had said on the other side, or what Sir William Hamilton had said in opposition to the professor's explanation the day before, and thus draw him out on a lengthy explanation. But, finally, it was found that the professor could

-.

of the battle of Marengo?" Certainly, Professor I will now describe the battle of Marengo: the battle of Marengo was a terrible and bloody affair. Thousands were slain on both sides, and many were wounded and taken prisoners. Many furious attacks were made on both sides. The cavalry of each army had several desperate encounters, and the repulses by the artillery were very severe. At last, after various minor incidents, victory alighted on the standard of Napoleon, and he became the conqueror of the field. Such, in brief, is the history of the battle of Marengo!"

"Yes, sir," was invariably the answer. "You are essentially correct in your statements, but a little general in your particulars!"

AT THE MORGUE.

TENDER, kind, and true!

What harm could come to you, My rarest one, my fairest one, the sweetest flower that grew?

Would God, the hand that did the deed, that deed could now undo!

Ah, how my heart has bled!

What tears my eyes have shed

To think that shame has stained her name, and soiled her golden head!

O coarsely-coffined clay ! The first sweet flowers of May Bloomed round the feet I went to meet that well-remembered day!

The old remembered place
Holds still her haunting face;

I see once more her fairy form in all its girlish grace;

And when I stand apart,

In busy street or mart,

Methinks one missing ring, Where shining seraphs sing, They will not miss who watch the weeds of

woe around her cling!

Ah, will they heed that lack, indeed, who stand before the King!

Shut down the coffin-lid,

And let my love be hid;

business operations that the non-existence of international copyright scarcely affects at all, and which neither treaties nor laws can alter. How this is so we will proceed to explain.

Of the immense number of books written abroad a small proportion only see the light in printed form. The foreign publisher makes

base world is rid!

Slow let the death-bell toll, Till its iron echoes roll Their tide of mournful memories through all my shuddering soul!

How shall I pass the heavy hours? How shall I bear to sit

In my lonely-lighted chamber, when the ghostly shadows flit

Over the mournful monument that marks her resting-place,

While all the stars that crown the night seem clustering round her face?

Now close the vault of stone,
And leave me here alone;

A blight is on the cold, gray world, its bud and bloom are flown!

Through many and many a weary hour of bitterness and pain,

When spring-time brings the budding flowers, and autumn brings the rain,

I wait till death shall claim me his and make the meaning plain! EDWARD RENAUD.

IT

EDITOR'S TABLE.

T has often been said that the lack of an international copyright law is the reason why American literature lags behind that of the leading European countries. The argument advanced is that so long as publishers can obtain foreign books for little or nothing, they will prefer to reprint these rather than publish American books, the writers of which must be paid. It has been pointed out how impossible it is for native writings to compete with foreign productions so long as the latter may be pirated at pleasure, and that our national policy drives talent to law or trade that otherwise might reflect honor upon us in works of learning or imagination.

Our readers will recall Charles Reade's eloquent utterances in emphasizing this view of the question. He asserted that we were

Was any word unsaid?

Was any prayer unprayed?

Was any eager dream of youthful longing un

allayed?

What bitter, bitter sin

Had the dark city's din

Within its evil bosom hid, thy spotless soul to win?

Hush! bush! no word of blame! Let no vile tongue defame That little word-the tenderest word that womanhood can claimFor the angels round the throne in heaven will know her by that name!

thing except writing-at a rate of march without a rival, and failing to write simply because we suppressed literary invention at home by accepting that of Europe without remuneration.

While it is certainly true that foreign literature in being here so freely offered and eagerly read does decidedly repress American effort in this direction, we think it can be shown that copyright has very little to do with this much-deplored result. Foreign literature has an immense advantage over native literature because of certain practical

He

him, and prints those only that he thinks will meet with public approval. The American publisher, in reprinting foreign books, starts, therefore, with the advantage of a selected class from which his selections for reprinting may be made. Nor is this all. He not only has the opportunity of selecting from that which has been gleaned, but he is enabled to choose those books that have passed the test of critical judgment. need only reprint the books of authors who have made their mark. It is obvious that for pure business reasons he must prefer to publish books that involve no risk-books that, having received in advance a foreign approval, are sure to meet with at least a measure of success here-rather than accept and publish home productions that are quite as likely to fail as to succeed. Ordinary business instinct and simple business precaution, therefore, give foreign authors an immense advantage over native ones, regardless of the question of copyright. That copyright influences this natural trade-preference very little is obvious from the fact that on very nearly all the better class of English books reprinted here a voluntary copyright is now paid. It is thus seen that American literature suffers from the operation of certain business principles and certain natural laws which international conventions or arrangements cannot change. So long as men do business for profit, our American authors must remain at disadvantage unless they can devise a plan whereby this natural business operation can be offset by other business principles.

In the drama the operation we have described acts more conspicuously and effectively than in book-publishing. It costs a great deal of money to produce a new play. There must be new scenery, new costumes, many weeks of rehearsal, much advertising. It is always a lottery whether a play will succeed or not. That manager has never been found whose judgment in an untried drama could be trusted as infallible; in fact, no manager ever lived who did not make many mistakes, and so hazardous is the business that very few people of capital are willing to accept its great risks. It is, therefore, perfectly obvious that managers will be sure to watch the English and Paris stage for the purpose of reproducing here those dramas that meet with success there, rather than risk their time and money upon untried

American plays. Copyright does not affect their decision or their course in the least, inasmuch as they promptly pay the foreign author of a successful play. It is clear that our native drama must languish so long as these imperative business principles operate against it.

Is there no remedy for this condition of things? There is one. If it so happened that the American public demanded native books and plays; gave marked preference to the protection of home authors and home dramatists; would not buy with avidity Reade and Trollope, nor flock with eagerness to listen to "Caste" and "Rose Michel," but insisted upon having writings touched with native coloring, and showed their love for plays that portrayed American life and character, a business principle would be set in operation that would speedily remedy the present evil. If the public were charged through and through with an intense nationalism-if its tastes were wholly foreign to European thought, and wholly in sympathy with native genius, it would not then be possible for managers or publishers to wait upon European opinion; they would be compelled instead to search for and bring forth home talent. They are at best no more than caterers, who study the tastes and obey the commands of their patrons. Our public taste, our nationalism, our preferences, these alone are to determine whether native productions of the imagination are to flourish or notwhether we are to remain an intellectual colony of Europe, or become in the arts a true independency.

largely prompted to his innovations by a desire to frame an American-English, something patriotically distinctive from the vernacular of the mother-country. The zealous schoolmaster insisted that we should follow the achievement of our political independence by a literary and lingual separation; and hence it would be a strange result if it should prove that he did his work of change so well, based it upon principles so good, that eventually the antagonist he was scouting comes to his way of thinking.

Webster's innovations, however, have so far only resulted in a few discords and vexations. The two countries are now so nearly a unit in literary feeling, that it is highly desirable we should employ a common method in our signs and symbols. There are not only certain marked differences between English spelling and our own, but also between Boston and New York, between the North and the South. Even in the same town books of different publishers will often follow dif ferent authorities, and one morning paper will talk of plough, while another severely prints the word plow. These differences perplex the general public and vex the literary worker. An English author, who discovers in an American reprint of his books a strange and hence disfiguring orthography, is not rendered very amiable thereby, or very appreciative of American taste. We have even known American authors, with strong preferences for the English mode of spelling, highly enraged and disgusted at finding their productions sent forth in what seemed to them a mangled orthography. In view of these facts, it is assuredly quite time that writers should agree upon some one authority, should unite in discovering that which is correct between the several conflicting usages, and adopt some plan for establishing uniform

The opinion of no individual should be binding, should even command respect in a matter where opinion cannot be decisive. The authoritative dictionary should not reflect the notions of a Webster, the opinions of a Worcester, the convictions of a Johnson or a Smart; it should express the united wisdom of scholars drawn from different sections, and have the weight of a convention or of an institution. Let Oxford and Cambridge in England unite with Harvard and Yale in America in sending delegates to a convention for composing a dictionary which shall represent the accordant best culture of the two countries. A dictionary thus prepared, having the sanction of the leading English and American colleges, would be absolute. It would be binding upon all writers hoping for recognition in letters, and, being universally accepted in the schools, would soon bring English-speaking people generally to a uniform orthograhpy and pronunciation.

AN English writer regrets that it is impossible to register "happy thoughts" and take out a patent for them. Most men, he tells us, who work in any field of thought or art find that bright ideas occur to them— ideas which are destined to have a glorious future-but for one cause or another they lack time or opportunity to throw them into form, permitting them to rest lovely pearls in the brain. Sometimes these happy thoughts require slow maturing:

"The perfectly original plot takes slow form and shape. Have we not been told that M. Feuillet thinks for a year over his? The characters group themselves, incidents are suggested by experience, witty sayings flash across the mind, and yet the pen is not put to paper. Only by living thus with his characters can the novelist get to know them, and make his readers know them. Or perhaps the happy thought is less mature; it is merely a taking title that has occurred to the min-l something brief, odd, suggestive, not vulgar, This thought is a nucleus, and out of it, as out of a germ, the characters begin shyly to gather and grow, while all the time the invertor is hard at work at some other project. Then one morning the unhappy man looks through the literary advertisements, and finds that his dear title the brief, the odd, the suggestive, the not vulgar-has been seized by another, is copyright, is in the press,' or 'just out'

There is nothing to be done in such aircumstances, and nothing to be done in an ever more trying situation. It will sometimes happen that a man gives many years to collecting material for a learned work, and he may even have put down much in writing, when suddenly a book on his own, his beloved topic, appears, and fills the public mind."

This is an unhappy experience, indeed for an author. Perhaps some one can invent a plan by which the first title to an ida may be established, and the originator protected. Copyright will not do it, for copyright, as a rule, does not protect ideas, bat rather the form and structure in which te ideas are imbedded. The inventor enjers here an advantage over the author, inasmuch as he can protect his thought, provided only that he put it in a concrete form by means of a model. The idea of a patent cannot be stolen, inasmuch as the idea and the form are indissolubly united; but in literature miniature models of a novel or a play carnot be framed. The happy conception can take no form but its final one, and the luckless originator who whispers it in his sleep, gives a hint of it at table over his wine, drops a clew ever so cautiously in the friendly chat, runs the risk of being anticipated by some adroit and swifter worker than himself.

If it were possible to patent literary ideas, the national museum that held the in store would tell a stranger story even tha the patent-office does of marvelous ingenuity, fantastic fancy, and queer caprice. What wonderful plots of wonderful tragedies would there be held in sacred trust; what plans fo